Fujimori under fire

WHO really holds power in Peru? A magazine put out by a leading economic consultancy got a surprising answer to that question in a recent survey. Among the Peruvians it questioned, hardly more named President Alberto Fujimori as the top man than named his enigmatic intelligence adviser, Vladimiro Montesinos. According to another poll, only two Lima residents in five believe their elected president is their country's real boss—over half name the armed forces—and only one in five thinks well of him.

So precipitous has been his fall in public esteem—and so many the ministers who have jumped, or had to be pushed, from their posts—that last week Mr Fujimori and the armed forces' top brass felt it necessary to stage a ceremony to affirm his esteem for them and their loyalty to him. This week his prime minister, Alberto Pandolfi, asked Congress to receive in closed session the same brasshats to hear their version of “a matter of national security”.

The matter was hardly a secret. Before the session began, a television station close to the government had said the generals would reveal information about Baruch Ivcher, the main shareholder in a rival, anti-government station. On July 13th it had been disclosed that Mr Ivcher was to be stripped of his Peruvian citizenship. Supposedly, his offence was that he had not properly renounced his former—Israeli—nationality when he was naturalised as a Peruvian 15 years ago. In fact, it was the repeated embarrassment caused by his broadcasters, culminating, on the day the decision against him was revealed, in allegations of widespread telephone-tapping of journalists, businessmen, politicians, even ministers.

Conveniently, the law bars non-citizens from holding shares in television firms. True, the constitution bars any Peruvian from being deprived of his citizenship. But then, say government lawyers, Mr Ivcher had never really become Peruvian anyway.

And what would the generals reveal, or at least allege, about him? Why, that he had had business dealings with the armed forces of Ecuador, a country with which Peru has a long-standing, and occasionally briefly flaring, border dispute. Exactly what dealings, in the event no one learned; amid opposition protests against it being held, the congressional session was suspended soon after it began.

Coming on top of previous scandals—brutality by the intelligence services, and recently the sacking of inconvenient constitutional-court judges—the storm over Mr Ivcher and the telephone-tapping that his journalists had uncovered was not about to go away. It had already cost Mr Fujimori a minister he could ill afford to lose: the foreign minister, Francisco Tudela, who became a national hero during this year's hostage crisis. He resigned on July 16th, citing “reasons of conscience” for his decision. The Ivcher affair was probably not the only reason: Mr Ivcher's station had said that among the 200 telephones tapped Mr Tudela's was one. (Two hundred? One? None, said the government this week: the recordings presented to back the charge, it said, were calls from cellular phones, which any fool could pick out of the air.)

Mr Tudela had jumped. Next to go—seemingly pushed, over human-rights scandals—was the defence minister, General Tomas Castillo Meza. But into his shoes stepped another general, Cesar Saucedo, the interior minister, a man reputed to have close ties with Mr Montesinos. He in turn was replaced by yet a third general, Jose Villanueva, till then holding a military command. This was the moment for the brasshats, both police and military, to turn up at Mr Fujimori's office to express their “subordination and loyalty” to him as chief of the armed forces.

Mr Ivcher has long been a thorn in their side. It was his station, Frecuencia Latina, that revealed the story of an army intelligence agent who was tortured by her superiors and of her colleague who was murdered; both, it seems, for having leaked information about intelligence operations to the media. Around the same time, the station revealed tax documents showing a sharp rise in Mr Montesinos's income. The armed forces, who are constitutionally barred from expressing political opinions, accused Mr Ivcher in late May of leading a campaign aimed at damaging their image. A journalist at the station says it was the story about Mr Montesinos that caused the most trouble. Pro-government minority shareholders are now seeking a court order giving them temporary control of the station.

Where does this leave Mr Fujimori? Elected in 1990, in 1992 he carried through a notorious autogolpe, an army-backed coup-from-above, against an obstructive Congress. He was triumphantly re-elected in 1995, and dreams of yet another triumph in 2000. He is still in office, and can still dream. But his popularity in Peru's opinion polls has slumped. It hit 67% just after he ended the hostage affair in April; it is now in the low 20s. He is due to address Congress on independence day, July 28th. Politicians and businessmen have urged him to reverse the decision against Mr Ivcher (the government is already starting to backtrack), and to send a clear message to the nation that it is he, not the men in uniform, who runs the country.

Might he even be forced out prematurely? “He must show he is willing to correct the errors made,” says one economist. “He still has three years, and the government must finish its term. Democracy has to be respected.” Yes indeed, say critics, but by the armed forces and the president too.